I have been “mistaken,” “misled,” “misrepresented,” and been “unaccountably in error,”
and am sorry if you have been offended

Wednesday, October 03, 2012

Some Thoughts around the New Noda Cabinet Polls… on the Japan Restoration Party

Asahi,
Yomiuri, and the Kyodo News wire service ran Oct. 1-2 polls right after the media
issued reports on the new Noda cabinet. The following are the results for three
key questions, with the previous September poll numbers in parenthesis. The
only consensus there is that the LDP is up, while DPJ numbers are scattered.
What’s truly anomalous, though, are support and voting intent numbers for Osaka
Mayor Toru Hashimoto’s Japan Restoration Party (JRP); they look extremely out
of kilter across the board. What’s going on?

Here’s what I think. The numbers in a
hypothetical poll that perfectly reflects national demographics would be closer
to the Kyodo numbers, but the JRP
needs to get its act quickly, in particular putting an end to what looks like a
power struggle between Hashimoto and its Diet members, who defected from the
LDP, DPJ, and Your Party. Otherwise it will see its numbers slipping to Asahi levels. Let me explain.

Polls tend to reflect the views of the
media outlet that is taking the polls. Thus, the LDP, nuclear power and the
like tend to do better on Yomiuri polls than on Asahi polls. Although the
polling companies conduct their surveys by random digit dialing, they first do
declare on whose behalf they are taking the polls. Personal experience and
common sense tell me that we are more inclined to spend our time answering
pointed questions from strangers when theywe are being polled on behalf
of beneficiaries that theywe have some familiarity with sympathy towards.
Thus, a newspaper poll should be disproportionately weighted towards its
subscribers, who are likely to have been heavily influenced over the years by
the editorial slant that permeates the news items*. No wire service elicits
that kind of brand loyalty. From that perspective alone, the Kyodo wire service
poll should provide less biased results.

* The board of editorial writers and the editorial
board are all promoted from the ranks of the reporters, giving Japanese newspapers
and wire services a seamless continuity from the correspondents to the editors
to much of management.

There’s more. The national newspapers
dominate the metropolitan Tokyo-Yokohama and metropolitan Osaka-Kobe areas and
their immediate environs (respectively: Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba, Saitama,
Ibaragi; and Wakayama, Nara, Hyogo). In prefectures elsewhere, local newspapers
account for roughly one-half to four-fifth of total subscriptions.* This means
that roughly one-half to four-fifths of newspaper subscribers outside of the
Tokyo and Osaka neighborhoods will be less inclined to respond to any newspaper
poll. These local-newspaper subscribers should be getting the bulk of their
printed national news from the wire services. If, as I assume, they have less
brand-loyalty to wire services than to newspapers, they are unlikely to be
overrepresented in the prefectural and national Kyodo numbers. In short, the Kyodo numbers should be relatively
free of geographical bias as well.

* A quick 2004 overview, a little old but shouldn’t be far off even now.

Why, then, does the JRP do better in every
which way in the Kyodo polls? The
local newspapers by definition carry more local news. They also have fewer
pages. I suspect that much of the commotion around the somewhat confusing
launch of the JRP and subsequent dissonance have been given short shrift in the
local papers, which enabled it to escape much of the resultant fallout. Still,
it appears to me that the JRP needs to put the commotion behind itself and
project a confident, united front going forward, or else the lack of positive
reports, coupled with whatever negative reports come in through print and TV
coverage will further erode support.

Note also that voter preference for the JRP
in the conservative Yomiuri poll is
still pretty high in contrast to the more general support. It’s obvious that
support for the JRP is still highly transient and the next couple of months,
when the JRP lines up candidates and sets up a definitive campaign platform,
will be crucial to the JRP’s long-term viability.

Much of what I’ve written is speculative,
but it’s the best that I can do, given the time and resources available to me.
Hopefully, polling experts can convince media outlets to conduct a more
in-depth analysis of these biases and their effects.

Q. Which
party do you support?

Asahi: LDP 21 (15); DPJ 14 (16); JRP 2 (3)

Kyodo
News: LDP 30.4 (19.3); DPJ 12.3 (12.9); JRP 10.7 (?)

Yomiuri: LDP 28 (21); DPJ 18 (15); JRP 2 (2)

Q. Which
party do you want to vote for on the lower house proportional district ballot?

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About Me

After graduation, Jun Okumura promptly entered what is now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and stayed in in its ecosystem most of his “adult” life. Along the way, he had pleasant stops in an assortment of Japanese quangos (Japangos?), overseas assignments and government agencies. After thirty years, though, it dawned on him that he had no aptitude whatsoever for administration and/or management. Armed with this epiphany, he went to the authorities and arranged an amicable separation; to come out, as it were. He is completely on his own IYKWIAS, but he and the METI folks remain “good friends.” He currently holds the titles of “visiting researcher” at the Meiji Institute for Global Affairs (no, that MIGA) and counselor at a risk analysis firm that dares not speak its name. This gives him plenty of time to blog or make money on his own. His bank account says that he does too much of the first, and insists that he do more of what he calls “intellectual odd jobs”. He wants to be paid to write fulltime, or better, talk—where the easy money is—but that distinction has largely escaped him. He really should not be referring to himself in the third person; he is not that famous.